Until the Fires Stopped Burning

Charles B. Strozier's college lost sixty-eight alumni in the tragedy of 9/11, and the many courses he has taught on terrorism and related topics since have attracted dozens of survivors and family members. A practicing psychoanalyst in Manhattan, Strozier has also accepted many seared by the disaster into his care. In some ways, the grief he has encountered has felt familiar; in other ways, unprecedented. Compelled to investigate its unique character further, he launched a fascinating study into the conscious and unconscious meaning of the event, both for those who were physically close to the attack and for those who witnessed it beyond the immediate space of Ground Zero.

Based on the testimony of survivors, bystanders, spectators, and victim's friends and families, Until the Fires Stopped Burning brings much-needed clarity to the conscious and unconscious meaning of 9/11 and its relationship to historical disaster, apocalyptic experience, unnatural death, and the psychological endurance of trauma. Strozier interprets and contextualizes the memories of witnesses and compares their encounter with 9/11 to the devastation of Hiroshima, Auschwitz, Katrina, and other events Kai Erikson has called a "new species of trouble" in the world. Organizing his study around "zones of sadness" in New York, Strozier powerfully evokes the multiple places in which his respondents confronted 9/11 while remaining sensitive to the personal, social, and cultural differences of these experiences. Most important, he distinguishes between 9/11 as an apocalyptic event (which he affirms it is not;rather, it is a monumental event), and 9/11 as an apocalyptic experience, which is crucial to understanding the act's affect on American life and a still-evolving culture of fear in the world.

This is the only work on 9/11 to describe people's experiences in depth while at the same time providing a broad sense of the human impact of the whole event.

Robert Lifton, author of Death in Life: Survivors of Hiroshima

Charles B. Strozier has crafted a unique and powerful blend of shattering personal narratives and thoughtful analysis. Anyone who wonders what 9/11 was like for those who experienced it up close will find Strozier's work the necessary reference. No other author possesses his blend of psychological insight, cultural and historical perspective, and narrative fluency. The intimately personal and profoundly historical mingle to produce a profound understanding of the human and cultural impact of the day America changed forever.

James W. Jones, author of Blood That Cries Out from the Earth: The Psychology of Religious Terrorism

This book offers a way of understandingof taking measure, of coming to terms witha thing that does not lend itself to any other kind of telling. That's why it is special. It issues from a richly layered mind.

Kai Erikson, author of A New Species of Trouble: Explorations in Disaster, Trauma, and Community

Strozier has given us a whole, complex view of 9/11 in a way no other book has. He blends historical, clinical, cultural, and personal perspectives in order to conceptualize how and why 9/11 changed American history. It is a book every American should read.

Peter Balakian, author of Black Dog of Fate: A Memoir

The atrocity of 9/11 did not burn and bury as many as the Holocaust, nor did it hit with the massive force of Hiroshima's black rain and wind, but Until the Fires Stopped Burning shows how these two horrors took part to produce a psychological and political tsunami that shook America to its core and continues to change the world. In the spirit of John Hersey's Hiroshima and Elie Weisel's Night, but with the rigor of a scientist, historian, and psychotherapist, Strozier tells a gripping and honest tale. The mostly ordinary people of this book, who happened upon an extraordinary event, did not encounter ordinary, plain death. They saw instead an apocalyptic landscape of vast, collective suffering closer to the end of the world. Yet this book also offers a heartening apologue of healing and recovery among the fellowship of New Yorkers.

Scott Atran, author of Talking to the Enemy: Faith, Brotherhood, and the (Un)Making of Terrorists

Until the Fires Stopped Burning not only captures the experience of 9/11 as it unfolded that day for responders like myself who survived but also captures the psychological experience of those for whom every day since has been 9/11-like in its power over their lives.

Tom Ryan, Fire Department of New York (RET)

...Strozier's intimate yet comprehensive, visceral, and intellectual dissection of 10 years of trauma, fear, and recovery is full of pain and mystery, radiance and strength.

Booklist

IntroductionThe EventPart I: 102 Minutes of DisasterZones of Sadness1. Survivors: Zone2. Witnesses: Zone3. Participants: Zone4. Onlookers: ZoneReflections5. The Dying6. Apocalyptic Interlude7. Traumasong8. Television: Numbing and Rage9. Hidden Children: Television's ExceptionPart II: 100 Days of Suffering10. Organic Process11. Disrupted Lives12. Death and Future13. Pregnant WomenPart III: Ten Years of Effects14. The Surprise of It All15. On Trauma and Zones of Sadness16. Historical Memory of the DisasterAcknowledgmentsAppendix: The Literature on Trauma and the Measurement of PTSD After 9/11NotesIndex

About the Author

Charles B. Strozier, a historian and psychoanalyst, is professor of history at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City, where he is also the founding director of its Center on Terrorism. He is the author or editor of twelve books on the psychological and historical aspects of contemporary violence and what it means to survive, the psychology of fundamentalism, self psychology and psychoanalysis, and themes in American history. These include the Pulitzer-nominated biography, Heinz Kohut: The Making of a Psychoanalyst; a coedited volume, The Fundamentalist Mindset: Psychological Perspectives on Religion, Violence, and History; and a single-authored psychological study of Abraham Lincoln, Lincoln's Quest for Union. His blog building on the themes of Until the Fires Stopped Burning can be found at www.911aftertenyears.com.